“Coming to Ventura Recovery Center, that was the start of a new beginning for me. That was a start of a great new life for me.”
I had a very hard outside image. With tattoos and everything and it makes people think “she’s tough” and you don’t want to deal with her. I do have a softer side to me. That’s the front I had to put up when I was living on the street. The fact that I slept on the street and did what I did when I was drinking. Just shows you the amount of power drugs and alcohol have over a person. Every other word was a cuss word. F this f that. Didn’t care who you were. I was going to screw you over I got what I wanted. I was manipulative. When I was on the street, I did what I had to do to survive out there to get a roof over my head for the night and a shower. I also spent weeks… I hit rock bottom out there. Not only getting raped, but spent weeks not showering. It brought me down to the worst low that somebody can hit. People that had been dealing with me for 5-6-7 years, literally months ago said pick out your outfit because we’re going to be going to your funeral soon. I was ready to end my life that day. I didn’t know what else to do. I was drinking pretty hard core that day… so I called a crisis hotline and told them I wanted to kill myself. It just happened to be Carl was returning my call that same day from the message I had left him under the influence the night before. He was out of his office, to my home within 10 minutes. Not really knowing answers to anything. He was just there to help somebody. He got me off the 5150 got me to Ventura Recovery Center that was the start of a new beginning for me. That was a start of thus far a great life for me.
The last time I was out on the run, I got close to 2 LAPD detectives one is a chaplain and other one is in sex crimes. They never gave up on me. They were always telling people about me. My story and everything… I called them up the other day to tell them where I’m at. I told them I had 66 days and they were absolutely in shock. I wanted to show other women out there that are like me, they don’t have to do the things they used to do to survive out there. They don’t have to do that old way of life old behavior with drugs and alcohol to make it. If they want to quit drinking and doing drugs and they want to stop they can. There’s help out there for them, recourses, if they want a different lifestyle there’s an alternative lifestyle out there. They don’t have to go down the wrong path. There’s a saying, things get worse never better. I 100% agree with that. My life went from 150% great to negative 150 and I hit rock bottom. If I can stop one person or one girl and open up to someone who sees their life heading in that direction. Then that’s what I want to do.